The twelve houses.

1. What a house is

Stand at the birthplace at the minute of birth and look at the whole sky, the half above you and the half under your feet. The horizon cuts that circle in two; the meridian, the line from due north through the point overhead to due south, cuts it again. Those two lines make four quarters, and each quarter is divided in three. That gives twelve houses, counted anticlockwise from the eastern horizon.

The signs are a calendar of the sky and are the same for everyone born in the same month. The houses are local: they depend on the place and the minute, because the Earth turns the whole zodiac past the horizon once a day. Two people born on the same day in different cities, or an hour apart in the same city, share their signs and differ in their houses. That is why the houses are where a chart stops being general and starts being yours.

2. The four angles

Four of the twelve cusps are the lines themselves, and they carry the most weight.

• AC, the Ascendant, the start of the first house: the degree of the zodiac rising in the east. Its sign is the rising sign, how you come across. In this chart it is ♈︎ 28° Aries 59'.
• IC, the Imum Coeli, the start of the fourth house: the bottom of the sky, home and roots.
• DC, the Descendant, the start of the seventh house: the degree setting in the west, partnership and the other.
• MC, the Midheaven, the start of the tenth house: the top of the sky, career and reputation. Here it is ♑︎ 18° Capricorn 55'.

A planet close to any angle is loud. The houses that begin at the angles, the first, fourth, seventh and tenth, are called angular and are read first; the next four, the second, fifth, eighth and eleventh, are succedent and build on them; the last four, the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth, are cadent and work more quietly.

3. The houses, one by one

Each house pairs with the sign and planet that sit in the same place in the natural order, Aries first. The pairing is a memory aid: the first house is about the self the way Aries is, the fourth about home the way Cancer is. Your own cusps will fall in other signs, and that is the point.

First house: self, appearance and first impressions

Natural pair: Aries and Mars · Asks: How do I come across?

The first house begins at the Ascendant, the point of the zodiac rising over the eastern horizon at the minute of birth, so its sign is the rising sign. It describes the surface of a person: manner, bearing, the first impression, the way they walk into a room. A planet in the first house is on show; whatever it stands for is the first thing people meet.

In the example: cusp at ♈︎ 28° Aries 59'; empty.

Second house: values and belongings

Natural pair: Taurus and Venus · Asks: What do I value, and what do I hold on to?

The second house is about what a person owns and what they rate: possessions, skills, tastes and the sense of their own worth. A planet here colours how they build and keep things over time, and what they count as theirs.

In the example: cusp at ♊︎ 0° Gemini 47'; empty.

Third house: communication and siblings

Natural pair: Gemini and Mercury · Asks: How do I think and talk?

The third house covers everyday communication: speech, writing, learning, short journeys, siblings and the neighbourhood. A planet here shows in how a person talks, what they are curious about and how they handle the stream of small exchanges a day holds.

In the example: cusp at ♊︎ 25° Gemini 39'; empty.

Fourth house: home and family

Natural pair: Cancer and the Moon · Asks: Where do I come from, and where do I rest?

The fourth house begins at the bottom of the chart, the IC, the point furthest from the sky above. It is home in every sense: the house a person grew up in, the family, their roots, and the private self they are when nobody is watching. A planet here is felt at home and in the early years.

In the example: cusp at ♋︎ 18° Cancer 55'; holds Mars, North Node.

Fifth house: creativity, romance and play

Natural pair: Leo and the Sun · Asks: What do I do for the joy of it?

The fifth house is play: creativity, romance, children, games, performance and pleasure. A planet here wants an outlet, and the person tends to express that side of themselves openly and with some flair.

In the example: cusp at ♌︎ 14° Leo 47'; holds Sun.

Sixth house: work and daily routines

Natural pair: Virgo and Mercury · Asks: How do I work, and what are my habits?

The sixth house is the working day: routines, craft, service, the small repeated tasks that keep a life running, and the way a person looks after what is in their care. A planet here shows in how they work and in the habits they keep, kept or broken.

In the example: cusp at ♍︎ 17° Virgo 37'; holds Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto.

Seventh house: partnerships

Natural pair: Libra and Venus · Asks: Who do I pair up with?

The seventh house begins at the Descendant, opposite the Ascendant, where the zodiac sets in the west. It is the house of the other: marriage and close partnership, agreements between two people, and open rivals too. A planet here describes what a person seeks in a partner and how they behave inside a pair.

In the example: cusp at ♎︎ 28° Libra 59'; holds Moon, Uranus.

Eighth house: intimacy, trust and what is shared

Natural pair: Scorpio and Pluto · Asks: What do I share, and what changes me?

The eighth house is what is shared and what is hidden: intimacy, trust, what two people hold in common, and the endings that turn into beginnings. A planet here runs deep; the person tends to meet that part of life with intensity rather than ease.

In the example: cusp at ♐︎ 0° Sagittarius 47'; holds Neptune.

Ninth house: travel, learning and belief

Natural pair: Sagittarius and Jupiter · Asks: What do I believe, and how far do I roam?

The ninth house is the wide view: long journeys, foreign places, higher study, philosophy, publishing and belief. A planet here pulls the person outward, towards whatever is further away or bigger than daily life.

In the example: cusp at ♐︎ 25° Sagittarius 39'; empty.

Tenth house: career and public life

Natural pair: Capricorn and Saturn · Asks: What am I known for?

The tenth house begins at the top of the chart, the MC or Midheaven, the highest point of the zodiac at birth. It is the public life: career, vocation, reputation, standing, and the mark a person leaves. A planet here is visible to the world and tends to shape what they are known for.

In the example: cusp at ♑︎ 18° Capricorn 55'; empty.

Eleventh house: friends and community

Natural pair: Aquarius and Uranus · Asks: Who are my people?

The eleventh house is friends, groups, communities and causes, and the hopes a person carries for the future. A planet here shows in the company they keep and in what they build with others rather than alone.

In the example: cusp at ♒︎ 14° Aquarius 47'; empty.

Twelfth house: rest, solitude and the unconscious

Natural pair: Pisces and Neptune · Asks: What do I keep to myself?

The twelfth house is the last before the Ascendant: rest, solitude, retreat, dreams, the unconscious, and what a person keeps out of sight, sometimes even from themselves. A planet here works quietly, in private, and is often felt before it is seen.

In the example: cusp at ♓︎ 17° Pisces 37'; empty.

4. Busy houses and empty ones

There are ten planets and a node to spread over twelve houses, so most charts crowd a few houses and leave five or six empty. An empty house is not a gap in a life. It means that area runs without a strong theme of its own; astrologers read it from the sign on its cusp and from the planet that rules that sign, wherever it sits in the chart.

Three or more planets in one house is a stellium, and it makes that area of life the busiest in the chart: whatever the house stands for keeps coming up, and the planets in it colour one another. In the example, the sixth house holds 5 planets, so a reading of this chart returns to work and daily routines again and again, while 7 houses are empty. Count your own: the house with the most planets is the second thing to read after the big three.

5. Which house a planet is in, and why systems differ

The angles are fixed by astronomy. How the space between them is divided is a choice, and astrologers have made several. Placidus, the system StarMap shows and the most used in the West, divides the sky by the time it takes each degree to rise, so the houses are unequal: large where the zodiac rises slowly at that latitude, small where it rises fast. Whole sign, the oldest system and common again today, makes each house one whole sign, starting with the rising sign, so every house is exactly 30° and the angles fall somewhere inside their houses rather than at the start.

Most planets land in the same house either way. A planet within a few degrees of a cusp can change house between systems, which is why two apps can disagree about one placement in your chart. When that happens, read both houses and notice which description fits; the sign of the planet does not change. Far north or south, inside the polar circles, Placidus cannot be computed and StarMap falls back to whole sign.

6. How to read your houses in order

1. The rising sign: the sign on the first house cusp sets the tone of the whole wheel.
2. The Sun’s house: where the core of you shows. Above the horizon, in houses seven to twelve, it tends to show in public; below, in houses one to six, in private.
3. The Moon’s house: where your feelings and needs are felt most.
4. The busiest house, if any has three or more planets.
5. Any planet within a few degrees of an angle, which speaks louder than its house alone.
6. Only then the empty houses, from the sign on each cusp.

7. Without a birth time

The Ascendant moves through a whole sign about every two hours, so a chart cast for noon can put the houses a quarter-turn wrong. Without a time StarMap draws the planets and their signs, starts the wheel at 0° Aries and gives no houses rather than guess. A birth certificate, a hospital record or a parent’s memory to the nearest half hour is usually enough. If all you know is the day, the rising sign calculator shows which sign was rising at every hour of that day, so a remembered “early morning” narrows it to one or two.